With the advent of spreadsheet applications, computer and computer software users have become accustomed to processing and manipulating enormous amounts of data and using spreadsheet functions to perform many simple to very complex calculations and organizational functions with their data. Typical spreadsheet solutions provide a grid made up of rows, columns and dividers for receiving and manipulating data. The structure of a spreadsheet grid provides easy layout in a visual way and makes it easy to change entire rows or columns of information by simply inserting, resizing and deleting rows or columns. Such a grid-structured spreadsheet also allows a simple way to reference other cells in the grid by allowing users to build complex solutions utilizing data and calculations. These calculations maintain integrity (i.e., adjust to changes) when new columns are inserted, content is cut/copied/pasted, and the like, and such grid-structured spreadsheets make this type of data manipulation easier to implement and understand.
In some cases, various pieces of data, data objects, and the like included in a spreadsheet document may be copied from the grid-structured spreadsheet for use in another spreadsheet or another document of a different type. Such cases occur where users feel overwhelmed by large seemingly endless spreadsheet grids and desire to move part of their data or various data objects (for example, tables, charts, summaries, and the like) to a different document type without the underlying row/column grid-structure of the spreadsheet to present the data in a way that is more professional, visually engaging, or easier to read and/or interpret.
Unfortunately, extracting data objects from a grid-structured spreadsheet for use with other spreadsheets or other documents of different types presents various drawbacks. First, present solutions do not allow a user to efficiently move data or data objects to and from one structure to another and, when moved, only the values but not any underlying formulas are retained. Second, such solutions can develop error situations when extracted data or data objects are subsequently manipulated outside of the originating spreadsheet. For example, if the user attempts to copy data or a data object that has been modified back into the grid-structured spreadsheet from which it came, similar error situations may occur. A way of allowing a user to pull data or data objects out of grid-structured spreadsheet and place them in an unstructured canvas where the pulled data objects may be freely arranged would be an improvement providing a technical advantage over the current state of the art because it would give the user the ability to present the data in a way that is more professional, visually engaging, or easier to read and/or interpret while retaining all of the sophisticated computational functionality of the spreadsheet application.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.